Monday, February 4, 2013

Every cute new baby deserves a cute new quilt, so... I made one. Shocker, right? I let my sister go through my stash and pick out favorite fabrics and colors, because I'm a super nice sister that way. She is much more artistic than me and has a great flair for color and style, so it was fun to let her do her thing and see what she came up with. You can see what I mean - this is what she picked for her first baby.

She choose lots of Sarah Jane prints and colors. (Those narwhals get me every time.) My sisters and I have been Sarah Jane groupies for a long time. It's so fun now that we can play with her art via fabric as well. I threw in a few more prints in the colors she chose and I love the way it's turned out.

For the back we used Sarah Jane's pinwheels and for the binding the orange polka dot from Children at Play.

I love the balloons print too. This new little gal has an older brother that LUVS balloons. So this print is in there for him. Maybe he can play I-spy with some of the other pictures in the quilt too. I've found that big brothers are often in need of good forms of distraction when new babies show up.

When I asked her what design she wanted, my sister was drawn to hexagon quilts. Which kind of freaked me out a little. I love hand-sewing hexagons together english-paper-pieceing style but had only ever completed small projects. The thought of a bigger quilt felt daunting to me.

Until I took a class from Kati about machine pieceing hexagons. So awesome! She has great tutorials here and here showing how she does it. Takes some patience, but so much faster than hand sewing. I also found an awesome 9" Hexagon die from AccuQuilt for my GO cutter and got it for myself for Christmas. Made the cutting SO slick. I think it's my new favorite die. I plan to put it to good use.

The custom quilting on this quilt was done by Emily of Emerson Quilting. I love how she custom quilted each hexagon. All of Emily's work is done free hand. Check out her website to see some of her amazing samples and great pricing. If you're looking for Sarah Jane fabrics they are still available at Fat Quarter Shop and Poppy Seed Fabrics.

I'm currently working on a quilt using the "Children At Play" for one of my boys and have a hexagons all cut out for a different project. I couldn't figure out the tutorial I'd been trying to follow for the machine pieced hexagons though, so this post could not have come at a better time! I love the quilt you made for your niece.

i have been a Sarah Jane groupie since before she had fabric lines and am so glad we now have her illustrations to turn into clothes, quilts, etc. Even though her two lines are so different i have had a little fun combining them too! the quilt is darling and i love the hexagons!!

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